


The Long Way

by Medie



Category: Stargate - Fandom
Genre: Community: fandom_stocking, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-07
Updated: 2011-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-14 13:20:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The city shouldn't be here, but that's all right. Neither should she.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladielazarus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladielazarus/gifts).



Sitting on the dock, she rests her chin on her knee and smiles. It looks wrong. The city shouldn't be here, but that's all right.

Neither should she.

"How?"

Elizabeth's smile widens. She looks over her shoulder, feeling the San Francisco breeze catch her hair. Behind John, she can see Lorne and some of the others. They're armed, uncertain, and she quashes the urge to laugh.

"That's complicated."

John nods. "I imagine it would be." He tips his head, listening to the voice shrill in his ear. Rodney. Elizabeth turns back, looking at the water, her enhanced hearing making Rodney's words as clear as a bell.

She frowns and wills her hearing back to human-norm range. She still forgets sometimes. The city makes that easy. She can see Rodney if she wants. He's right there. She doesn't even need to close her eyes. A shift in her visual processes and she can see the control room and the anxious faces filling it. She blinks and she can see Rodney's lab with Rodney and Radek watching them on the monitor.

"You look different," John says.

Elizabeth pulls her vision back and turns around to face him. "Like myself?"

He nods. "Before―you kind of looked a little―" John shrugs and sits down next to her. "This is you, right?"

"In a way." Elizabeth bites her lip. "It's hard to explain." She looks down at her hand and so does John. "Flesh and blood with a nanotechnology base." She watches him reach for her, running his fingers down her palm. "And a little something extra for fun."

"A little something fun?" John pulls his hand away, casual, but she can read the hesitation in his movements. She knows him. She knows all of them. "Like?"

"I―I think merged with the city." Elizabeth draws in a breath. "The last time I was here. I―I don't understand it, exactly, but it was like―" She looks up at the city, its spires stretching toward a sky she'd never thought to see again.

"Like Atlantis reached out and grabbed you," John says, surprising her.

He's grinning when she looks at him. He _believes_ her. Elizabeth wants to dance with excitement. She hasn't done that in―she hasn't done it in so long even her enhanced memory can't recall.

"I think so," she says, letting herself smile again. "I think it did."

It's not _over_ , she knows that. There'll be tests. Stargate Command and the IOA will demand them. She doesn't think she'll ever get her position back, but she doesn't _need_ it.

Atlantis has something else in mind.

"You know, this might sound like I'm complaining and, believe me, I'm _not_ , but―why?"

Biting her lip, Elizabeth looks down at the water. "The city needed a voice."

John's hand reaches for hers.

She nods at the unspoken message. Atlantis needed a voice, she needed Atlantis, and John―John _needs_ her.

"Everybody wins," he says. "I can work with that."

Elizabeth leans into his shoulder and closes her eyes, feeling Atlantis solid beneath them both. "So can we."


End file.
